Film Festival vs. real life

Oh man… I have been wanting to update the blog for 3 days but it’s been so busy I haven’t had time. The funny thing is, I thought being in a festival right here in my own backyard would be easier. But the fact that I still need to tend to my regular life makes things twice as crazy. When I was at Uncle Mike’s last weekend for GSFF, all I had going on was GSFF. This weekend however, I had a video shoot for a client on Friday evening that I had booked months ago and I didn’t want to cancel, plus my usual home and family stuff to attend to. So it’s been a little nuts.

On Friday April 2, I spoke at the Phoenix Film Festival’s Educational Outreach program for high school students. It was an honor to be part of a program that included not only a couple of other filmmakers with films in the Festival, but also ILM visual effects producer Mark Miller, actor Dylan Baker, Oscar-nominated writer Michael Tolkin, and director John Landis. I didn’t get to speak with Mr. Landis, but the other panelists were great to talk with and I have had a number of conversations with each of them. Michael Tolkin especially. We spent quite a bit of time chatting at the VIP breakfast on Saturday and then again on Saturday night at the party.

The gist of my panel discussion was, “What do I do after high school if I want to be a filmmaker?” It was a good program and I think the high-schoolers got some valuable information out of it. We closed the Education Outreach program and sort of served as the capstone on the day for the kids. After the program then, as I said, I ended up off on a video shoot. But Uncle Mike, Steve Briscoe, Ken Dapper, and even my student and pal Clint Comer worked the Festival and handed out our postcards all day in my absence, then caught a screening of Rick Schroder’s Black Cloud.

Okay… more in a bit. Saturday was a great great great day and I have much more to write.